Looking Beyond
June 14, 2008
A rook flies
over sand banks,
over us parked
by a sea of gorse.
Across the Holy Loch a church
is wedged between trees.
The hills behind are a downy haze
of birch, the mountains glazed
with snow. The sky
drips with clouds blown
beyond the reach of wing tips.
We drive deep into the neck of hills.
Ripples travel fast across
the loch, faster than the cormorant
swooping past the crannog.
Lost in the slopes and trees,
lost in the saltless loch,
you turn to me
and for a moment,
as in the puddle beneath
the gorse, I see
an image of me
in the water blossom
of your eyes.
by Marion McCready
Categories: Water
Marion McCready
Sigh. That’s lovely. Thank you.
A beautiful poem, and well read. Filled with ache, and longing, I think, for the history of the Holy Loch as well as for the companion’s touch, the distances of bird flight, single across expanses of water. A poem served well by its music, an architecture in the repetitions of “loch” and “gorse,” lines counterpointed with internal rhyme and half-rhyme: sea/trees, haze/glazed, church/birch, fast/faster/past/lost, and many more. Well done, indeed.